... begins by trying to clarify what consciousness is (or rather, may be) before casting a brief but critical eye over the empirical research undertaken by cognitive psychologists working in this area to see what they have revealed about the function and structure of consciousness. One question that arises immediately is whether or not consciousness is actually a single mechanism? Block (1995) has proposed that there are two distinct facets of consciousness: a cognitive trans-modular aspect (access consciousness) which relates to awareness of 'things', be they sights, sounds, tastes, memories and ideas and which makes this information accessible to other cognitive and neural processes such as memory, attention, decision-making etc; and the inner feelings (phenomenal consciousness) engendered by such awareness. The conscious access hypothesis was framed within a previously unconnected concept of a 'global workspace' cognitive capacity operating in a complex system of specialised knowledge sources which cooperatively solves problems insolvable ...

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